The environmental impact assessment (EIA) report on a massive investment project to build a new fab in the south announced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to be completed in one-and-a-half years to ensure that TSMC can go ahead with its plans, the Southern Taiwan Science Park Bureau said on Saturday.
TSMC aims to build an advanced 3-nanometer foundry in the Tainan Science Park (台南科學園區), which is a part of the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學工業園).
Taiwan Science Park Administration director-general Lin Wei-cheng (林威呈) said that his office would need about one year to collect information about the project’s possible effect on the environment.
The bureau, which is supervised by the Ministry of Science and Technology, will need an additional six months to finish the assessment report before a 30-hectare plot of land can be assigned for construction of the new facility by the end of 2020, Lin said.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, on Friday announced that it had chosen Tainan as the site to house its first 3-nanometer process fab, which is expected to help the company maintain the lead over its peers in the global market.
While TSMC did not disclose financial details about the plan, local media reported that the investment could total NT$500 billion (US$16.5 billion) and commercial production is expected to begin in 2022.
The fab is expected to be the largest investment ever made in Taiwan.
Lin said that the timeframe for the bureau to complete an EIA report for TSMC’s newest investment plan is expected to meet the company’s aim to start mass production by 2022.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs will be in charge of water and power supply for the plant, he said, adding that about half of the water supplied to the plant is to come from recycled sources, while tap water would make up the other half.
Construction of a water recycling plant in Tainan’s Yongkang District (永康) is under way and other water recycling facilities near the new plant are being planned to meet TSMC’s needs.
As for power consumption, Lin said that Premier William Lai (賴清德) has promised to ensure sufficient supply of electricity to TSMC.
TSMC would probably not have announced such an important investment if the company had failed to secure a firm promise from the government, Lin added.
Before Friday’s announcement, the market speculated that TSMC would build the sophisticated plant outside Taiwan, possibly in the US, amid worries over adequate water and power supply.
“Now it turns out that TSMC is willing to stay in Taiwan. The move will be economically positive for the country,” Hua Nan Securities Co (華南永昌證券) analyst Kevin Su (蘇俊宏) said.
Taiwan needs massive investments to boost its economy to offset the effect from possible weakness in global demand in the future, said Dachrahn Wu (吳大任), director of National Central University’s Research Center for Taiwan Economic Development.
TSMC’s purchases of production equipment and its hiring for the new plant, as well as future exports of its products, will no doubt benefit Taiwan’s economy, said Gordon Sun (孫明德), director of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research’s Economic Forecasting Center.
Some market analysts said TSMC’s investments would prompt its suppliers at home and abroad to pour funds into Taiwan and raise production to meet the demand from such an important customer.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
France is developing domestic production of electric vehicle (EV) batteries with an eye on industrial independence, but Asian experts are proving key in launching operations. In the Verkor factory outside the northern city of Dunkirk, which was inaugurated on Thursday, foreign specialists, notably from South Korea and Malaysia, are training the local staff. Verkor is the third battery gigafactory to open in northern France in a region that has become known as “Battery Valley.” At the Automotive Energy Supply Corp (AESC) factory near the city of Douai, where production has been under way for several months, Chinese engineers and technicians supervise French recruits. “They
RSS